


albatross

by threebears



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-18
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-03-20 14:25:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13719588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threebears/pseuds/threebears
Summary: Some days it feels as though the weight of it all might throttle her; others, it's as if Hawke is the only thing to remind her of what she is.Or:Hawke and Isabela do their damnedest.





	1. in a strange city lying alone

**Author's Note:**

> aaa, it's only taken me 7 years to spit out a fic for my favorite ship of all time.

Of all the pubs and taverns across Thedas, landlocked or dockside, Isabela supposes the Hanged Man would certainly rank very firmly in the middle of the lot. There’s nothing terribly particular, or particularly terrible, about it one way or another. The drinks are predictably shit, but that’s not surprising. Tavern swill is a comfortingly universal language, with little room for creative interpretation.

The smell isn’t nearly as bad as Kirkwallers think it is, though the way they go on about it makes Isabela suspect it’s a point of pride. It smells right enough like piss and stagnant sea foam, like any proper tavern ought to. But it’s not burn-your-nostrils, oh-Maker-hand-me-a-bucket rancid like that one inn off on the Fuck Off, Nowhere eastern coast of Ferelden she and her crew had to hunker down in through a storm a few summers ago. It was a remarkable feat that an establishment _that_ far in the boondocks with _that_ minimal patronage could wield a smell _that_ potent.

As far as the patrons go, Isabela’s seen ruder, crasser, and leagues fitter crowds than the lot that frequents the Hanged Man. Within the month, she’s fucked her way through the best on offer and the idea of dipping back in for seconds makes the roof of her mouth itch. Occasionally, merchant crews from Antiva or Rivain will drop anchor for a night or two and Isabela wakes up to the scent of cinnamon and salt spray and sweat and it feels like Satinalia come early. She spends days after stiff and sore in all the right places and it fills her with a wistful homesickness that she forces deep into the pit of her stomach because it doesn’t do to dwell on such things when there’s work to be done. So after a day or two of recovering in her threadbare sheets and chattering with that devilishly handsome dwarf with the _delicious_ chest hair down the hall, she sets back to the work that has her woefully stranded in this just okay city.

And regretfully, that work is what has her surrounded by some of her more oafish associates presently. Something something, you owe us money, something something, _whore_. Isabela is no stranger to that particular moniker being spat hatefully at her by men and women of all stripes, but something about it being hurled by someone as mightily incompetent as Lucky chafes at her in a way that has her eyes rolling.

“Well, Lucky. I’ll tell you what.” She drawls, pouring a cloudy tumbler full of the Hanged Man’s worst. “Since the information you gave me was worth nothing, _that’s_ what I’ll pay you.”

She moves to take a drink, but Lucky slams her wrist down, the amber liquid splashing her fingers and the already booze-warped surface of the bar.

“Me and my boys will get our money’s worth, bitch.” He snarls, and Isabela is so stricken at how he looks like one of the particularly hideous types of fish found sucking up sand and muck that don’t taste very lovely, that she nearly misses the ugly gleam in his eyes that sets something on fire low in her, hot and angry.

“Oh.” She coos, cocking her head at him. “You poor, sweet thing.”

For a moment, brief and sweet enough to luxuriate in, Lucky looks almost excited. The absolute git. She snakes a hand through his hair, and he has the nerve to shut his eyes. Just as well.

Isabela is hard-pressed to think of a sound more satisfying than a man’s nose splintering against a bar counter. Maybe the pop of a champagne cork, or waves lapping against the hull of a ship. A headboard creaking. She’s getting distracted.

She lets Lucky drop to sag and whimper, clutching his nose. His goons scramble to come to his aid, but they’re not much of a bother, either. They’re slow, sluggish. Weighed down by poor training and overconfidence. A potent combination, that. She doesn’t even bother drawing her daggers until she hears the hiss of steel being drawn from Lucky’s scabbard, and even that is more of a courtesy than anything else. She levels her blade at his throat, lifting a brow.

“Tell me, Lucky. Is this worth dying for?”

His pale eyes dart frantically back and forth, nose bleeding violently and freely, taking measure of his goons as they hoist themselves back to their feet, groaning. He spits, taking a step back and storming out of the bar in an arc, giving Isabela a graciously wide berth. She smirks, posting her elbows up on the bar and leaning bodily against it. She traces the rim of her tumbler with her pinky, feeling altogether delighted with herself.

“I didn’t think so.”

Out of pure indulgence, she watches them scamper through the threshold of the tavern, thoroughly chastised. Poor sod couldn’t even make a clean getaway with any dignity, bumping into a modestly-sized throng of thoroughly armed newcomers. Blunders right into a sandstone wall of a woman in full plate that doesn’t budge in the slightest when he slips past her, murmuring what could have been easily an apology or an insult. She manages to fashion a truly impressive scowl at him, though.

Isabela flicks through the lineup, not seeing any familiar faces among them. They’re a ruddy lot, definitely Ferelden. They’re all eye-catching, in a way. The blockish ginger in the unflattering armor has a face chiseled out of no-nonsense and wrought iron, liberally spattered with freckles that are entirely too charming to be wasted emblazoning such severity. At her side is a magnificently broad young man with dark hair and arms like a well-knotted rope. Isabela shudders at the thought of all that _rippling_. To her mild dismay, his attention seems wholly dedicated to the adorable little sprig of a woman at his side. All joints and glowing eyes, the elf is beaming up at him and chattering in that clipped sort of way that the Dalish do, and she's got the face tattoos to match. Interesting.

Finally, she sweeps up and down the tall one at the front, her stomach twisting and untwisting in delight at the prospect of _this_ one. The height ought to be ungainly, but she manages it with a sort of knowing grace, every movement precise and calculated enough to suggest easygoing lethality. A shock of coal hair nearly tangles in a thicket of dark eyelashes. Eyelashes that frame a set of the least subtle blue eyes Isabela has seen in all her particularly long days. In fact, everything about this woman seems to be exaggerated to the point of distraction. Her nose is long and straight, like the needle of a compass. Her grin errs too far to the right, dimpling one narrow cheek and not the other. Her clothes are nearly embarrassing, too-big and too-small, fraying and soot-stained, but she bears herself as if she’s cloaked in the finest Antivan silks. A spear is slung loosely over her back, its blade curved and cruel like a fisherman's hook. Bottles and flasks line the belt cinched tight around those barely-there hips. Not the weapons of choice for honest folk. 

_She_ might do nicely.

Isabela throws back the rest of her drink and swipes the back of one hand across her lips. The mannish redhead has caught her staring and is doing a wonderful impression of a thundercloud with only her face. Isabela winks at her, graciously taking the cue to introduce herself. As she sashays across the tavern floor, easily weaving through patrons and their wandering hands, one by one she gets their attention. Ginger certainly doesn’t look pleased at the proximity, while Arms and the Adorable One seem to be starry-eyed to varying effect. Tall, dark, and lanky is the last to notice her approach, tilting her head lazily Isabela’s way. A smirk tugs one corner of her lips skyward and close up, and those blue eyes are ever so slightly unsettling.

“You’re new around here, aren’t you?” Isabela says, although she already knows the answer. Arms puffs up a bit at that, as if the question has affronted him somehow. The beanpole laughs this great, hideously melodic honk of a laugh, clipping him on the shoulder in gentle reprimand.

“Did all our finery give it away?” She asks, stretching her arms wide, the wingspan of a sodding albatross, showing off every shoddily-stitched hole in her tunic. “Or maybe it was the sunburns on our gloriously fair complexions?”

Isabela snorts, dropping a hand to rest on our hip, “Actually, I was going to say that you look far too happy to be here at all.”

Dark brows lift even further into a copse of raven hair at that.

“Well, what’s not to be happy about?” She asks in a raspy voice that is absolutely _shivery_. “The sun is _sort_ of shining and the stench of rotting fish entrails is blessedly downwind today.”

“It’s the little things, isn’t it?” Isabela purrs. “The name’s Isabela. Formerly Captain Isabela. Sadly, without a ship, the title rings a bit hollow.”

The southerner’s gaze rakes her up and down, more appraising than leering.

“A pleasure, captain.” She says easily, extending a hand. “I’m Hawke.”

By the feel of the callouses and nicks littering her hand, this Hawke is no stranger to a hard day's work. She considers for a moment if it might be the kind of work that would be of any benefit to her. There’s a certain unsavory glint in the gangly southerner’s eye that gets Isabela’s nerves a-thrumming with something that feels like promise.

“The pleasure is mine.” She says, lacquering her voice with her specially formulated brand of innuendo. Hawke's eyes spark, but it's not with the anticipated lust. It's knowing amusement. Isabela thinks to feel ashamed for being caught out so easily, and so quickly, but it's to her benefit that all sense of shame has long since made itself scarce. “Say, how would you like to-“

She’s cut off by a throat being cleared, haughtily. Ginger’s arms cross with the clanking fanfare of her plate, which Isabela just now notices is the standard of the city guard. She wonders if she’s crossed this one yet, or if she’s just green and has good instincts. Obviously not upstanding enough to steer clear of Hawke, who upon rigorous examination, (purely professional), looks like the Patron Saint of All Things Scheme-y. She clears her throat pointedly, narrowing her eyes. _Testy_. Hawke tosses a glance over her shoulder and sighs.

“Unfortunately, as my _associate_ has ever so tactfully pointed out, we’ve an appointment that we’re a bit late in keeping.” She says, running a hand through her absolute whirlwind of hair. “Maybe I’ll see you around, hey?”

Isabela taps her chin thoughtfully, but Hawke is being borne away and up the stairs none too delicately by her stodgy companion before she can get a word out. It’s a given that all sailors are gamblers, so she shouts:

“Maybe I’ll see you at the Chantry in Hightown? Midnight?”

Hawke whirls, looking madly thrilled, all sharp angles and mischievous giddy.

“Maybe!”

With a rough push and a thoroughly undignified squawk, she and her companions disappear to the upper reaches of the Hanged Man, where no good has ever been known to occur. Isabela smiles, turning back to the bar and rapping her knuckles for another round. The burn of bad whisky settles keen and heavy at the back of her throat and she considers that maybe the swill in Kirkwall is better than she’d given it credit for.  


	2. the good and the bad and the worst and the best

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey! thanks for looking at this! here is some more. i'm having a lot of fun with this one, it's coming a lot easier than most other things i've ever written. 
> 
> also, the chapter titles for this are being shamelessly lifted from "the city in the sea" by edgar allan poe.

“So. What’s magic like?”

Isabela drops easily to the sand beside Hawke, tucking her legs beneath her. Hawke smiles sideways at her, eyebrows lifting.

“Why, Isabela. What a concise and straightforward inquiry.” She sighs. Isabela rolls her eyes, offering something in her closed fist. Hawke splays her palm and in drops a merry assortment of nuts, seeds, and berries. Her brows, as they often do in the pirate’s company, lift ever higher. Isabela tuts.

“Merrill is presently foraging up the hill out of sheer boredom.” She explains, popping a magnificently purple berry between her lips. “I was helping, but then _I_ got bored of _that_.”

Satisfied, Hawke plucks a seed from her palm and rolls it between her fingers. She drops it into her mouth and bites down and it tastes just like dirt and it’s perfect.

“Are you going to answer my question?” Isabela prods. Hawke shrugs.

“I suppose I don’t really know how.” She says, shrugging and chewing. “What’s piracy like?”

“Bloody _amazing_.” Isabela laughs, and the sound of it is something velvety and firm. “See? Not so hard. Now you go.”

Hawke sighs, looking over the Waking Sea. The sun has just dipped over the horizon, casting the lazily sloshing waves an uncomfortable red. The kind of red the sea shouldn’t be. It’s quite pretty. Unnerving. She wonders if it’s holding up the smugglers they were supposed to rendezvous with half an hour ago. Sailors are a superstitious lot. Isabela doesn’t seem the type, though. Egregiously pragmatic, that one. Although, Hawke supposes a sailor without a ship does bely some sort of failing. Maybe she wasn’t superstitious enough? They haven’t gotten to that bit just yet. Sordid pasts and lingering regrets can take a good while to drudge up.

Isabela clears her throat and Hawke thinks that somehow, Isabela can tell that she hasn’t been thinking about her question even a little bit. There’s something uncanny always dancing just beyond reach with her.

“It’s… alright, I guess?” Hawke ventures. Isabela scoffs.

“Well! What do you want me to say?” Hawke exhales on a laugh, dodging a rather violently tossed berry. “It’s all good fun, excluding the apostacy of it all. Sometimes _including_ the apostacy of it all, though, if I’m being quite honest. Could do well enough without the demons.”

“That’s all you have to say about it? Just last week I saw you dangle a man by his ankles over the side of a sodding _mountain_ with just your _mind_.”

“He was a right tit, wasn’t he?”

Isabela shakes her head, throwing up her hands in defeat. A smile plays on her deliriously full lips, and Hawke can’t help but offer one in return. Even so, she’s happy to let the subject drop. The only other person she’d ever been able to speak with frankly about magic was Bethany. Growing up, it had felt like this clandestine sort of club for just the two of them. They’d wander over the low, sweeping hills about Lothering, sometimes smuggling out armfuls of their father’s books, others not, chatting and waxing philosophic about what they thought they understood. Until the watery sun collapsed on itself and they stumbled home, tripping over themselves in the dark.

Talking about it with anyone else feels wrong, still. Anders thinks it a waste, even if he won’t say so aloud. Merrill, though, seems to understand it. Even if she’s never said so outright.

She stares at Carver, keeping watch on the exposed reef that curves around the bay. She’s glad he didn’t hear any of it. Sometimes she wishes he’d been born like her and Bethany. Maybe they’d fight less. Maybe they’d fight more. At least they’d have more in common than their hair color, jawline, and penchant for starting fights in taverns.

“You know,” Hawke starts when the silence begins to itch. “they never kept me waiting like this when I was working for Athenril. This freelancing thing is _shit_.”

“Oh, _do_ cheer up.” Isabela says, laying down in the sand and salt-stained pebbles. “You’ve nearly an almost-respectable amount of coin, for Lowtown.”

Hawke plucks a particularly round stone exposed from where the tide rolled back, peeling itself from the beach not an hour ago. She rolls it between her palms.

“Not quite enough, just yet. Soon, though.” She says absently. Isabela shifts onto her side, resting her cheek upon her hand. The stud beneath her lip catches, glinting sharp in the sunset.

“I _still_ don’t think this is your most thoroughly-baked scheme, Hawke.” She says, and she sounds so convincingly put-upon that Hawke nearly mistakes it for concern. “Willingly stomping around the Deep Roads, it’s absolutely barking.”

“It doesn’t sound picturesque to you? Millenia-old mummified dwarves, enough darkspawn to _swim_ in, spiders the size of horses?”

Isabela scoffs and pushes sand over the top of Hawkes boot, petulant.

“We’ve got spiders the size of horses _here_. I know Varric’s been filling your pretty little head with notions of untold treasure, just begging to be plundered, but there’s no need to go trudging through a bunch of tunnels dwarves can’t be arsed with anymore. Which should tell you how not worth it the entire endeavor is, they _made_ them. It’s their stuff in there, and they won’t even go out and get it!”

Hawke feels the rock in her hands gradually warming with the way she worries it, runic and sure.

“What would you suggest, then? In all your well-salted wisdom.” She asks, teasing, but only mostly. If she’s being honest with herself, really the only person she’s _been_ honest with in a while because she’s the only one she’s certain she can trust and even that gets a touch murky, she’s not altogether thrilled at the idea of spending weeks on end in the Deep Roads. Cloudy spells lasting longer than three days sour her mood.

Isabela smirks, pouring more sand over the top of Hawke’s foot and it’s nearly well and buried by now.

“You want to know what _I_ would do?” She murmurs conspiratorially.

“The anticipation has me all a-flutter.”

“I’d just steal whatever they came back with.” The pirate says, shrugging. “There has to be good stuff down there. There always is when it’s someplace old and cursed.”

Hawke laughs, putting the very round stone atop the lazy sandcastle erected atop her boot. It’s proper, now.

“That’s not terribly convoluted enough to be fun, though.” She says, something uncomfortably adjacent to warmth spreading through her chest as Isabela smiles at the contribution to her work. “Why don’t you just admit you’ll be bored to tears without me for a few weeks?”

“Oh I’ll be going positively mad, Hawke.” Isabela says, nodding. “I’ll be restless enough to do something entirely illegal, but you won’t be around to run interference on Aveline. She may _actually_ arrest me!”

“Well, if you’re up for it, we can commit a string of random acts of kindness and chivalry when I’m back. Even the scales a bit?”

Hawke belts another laugh at the grimace that Isabela can’t control from twisting over her face.

“I think it’s better that I leave all the doing-good to you, sweet thing.” She murmurs, and Hawke suppresses the trembling feeling at the base of her spine that starts every time Isabela uses that particular pet name.

“It’s not so bad, I promise.” Hawke presses, teasing. The pirate’s eyes roll up into heavy lids in feigned irritation. “We can start small. Rescuing cats from trees and hanging up old biddies’ washing. Demon-slaying and highwayman-wrangling are a little advanced, yet.”

Isabela shifts her attention to the lapping waves, and there’s an uncomfortable tangle of sympathy and pity writhing in Hawke’s gut at the wistfulness in that amber gaze.

“Not to be too maudlin about it all, but doing good things has rarely ended favorably for me.” She says, in a softer tone than seems appropriate for the great and terrible Queen of the Eastern Seas. It’s somber and sorrowful, like the last finger’s worth of rum at the bottom of a bottle. Hawke just barely catches the edge of a question with the tip of her tongue, and instead leans back into the sand, propped up on her elbows.

“The best thing about doing good things is that you get to be maudlin and nobody can say anything about it. Because of all the good you’ve done.”

Isabela snorts, pulling a flask from the leather hand strapped to her thigh. She takes a long pull and wipes the back of her hand across her lips. Clearing her throat, she offers it to Hawke.

“Can you just imagine? _Me_? Sighing breathily and clutching my bosom as I contemplate the overwhelming plight of the world?”

“Well, _now_ I am.” Hawke says, mouth drying a bit despite the lukewarm liquor splashing onto her tongue. The Rivaini woman grins wickedly, silent melancholy all but evaporating into the familiar veneer of flirtation and sultry whimsy.

“And how much time do you spend thinking about my heaving bosom, hm?”

“I never specified that it was _heaving_ , you tart.”

“Wasn’t it, though?”

Hawke dangles the flask just out of her reach when Isabela reaches back for it, sticking her tongue out at the other woman.

“Do you think about me thinking your heaving bosom often, then?”

“So you admit it was _indeed_ heaving?”

Amber eyes splash with utter delight in the sun’s last rays and Hawke’s breath hitches for such a slight moment that later that night, when she’s falling asleep, she convinces herself it hadn’t. Moments like these have become more frequent over the past few weeks, and Hawke isn’t quite sure what to make of it. Of course, the unbidden thoughts of _yes_ and _more_ might suggest that she’s leaning toward liking it.

“I might’ve entertained the thought once or twice.” Hawke admits, finally handing the rum back to its rightful handler. “But as far as chests go, you’re still some long ways away from beating out Varric.”

“I’ll drink to that.” She says. And she does.

The next silence they lapse into is easier than the last. The gulls and shorebirds have tucked in for the night, puffed up in great big bunches across the beach like so many clouds fallen to earth. The sky bleeds slow and soft from red to purple, stars visible just above the constant smoke and smog rolling off Kirkwall.

It’s been a work in progress, but there’s something about here that’s starting to feel passably okay. After shedding the yoke of indentured servitude, Hawke has so much _time_. So much space to do and become. Even living with her mother, brother, and her sodding miserable uncle becomes a charming little footnote to the great adventure of it all on nights like this.

And she had more friends, actual _friends_ , than she’d ever had at any one time. Sometimes it caught her off-guard, became a little overwhelming when they were all knocking elbows and fighting over table space around their usual bench at the Hanged Man. Or when Anders and Fenris got a little snarly for polite company, which was mercifully seldom-kept. Or when Aveline got to sniffing around a little too close around a fencing job she and Varric had set up.

But Hawke supposes that’s what friendship is supposed to be like, sometimes. A bunch of people with hearts in the right place trying to make a go of it while negotiating the pitfalls of petty crime and dramatically disparate ideologies.

It’s always been easier to be around Isabela, though. Hawke thinks it would probably be better to not think about the why too terribly much. Isabela certainly isn’t the type to think about the why herself. Sitting on a beach, soggy with rum and boots in the sand is much prettier than any _why_ , anyway.

Carver’s sharp whistle pierces the calm, sending up a flutter of disgruntled honks from the sleeping birds across the beach.

“Andraste’s chafed nipples, it’s about time.” She sighs suddenly, tossing the flask back at Hawke as she rises. “I’ll go fetch Merrill. Don’t do any negotiating until I’m back, you’ll end up losing us coin.”

“It happened _once_.” Hawke protests weakly, draining the last mouthful of rum. She tries to not feel anything over the fact that Isabela left it for her.

“Once is enough to lose bartering privileges for life, you utter loon.” She calls over her shoulder. “Get everything on shore and just stand there looking pretty, understood?”

“Aye aye, captain.” Hawke says, saluting the pirate’s retreating form.

In the cool night, nobody ever saw Hawke looking after the woman a moment too long, something grasping at the pit of her stomach wrinkling her brow.

Hawke isn’t going to think about why, watching the easy sway of Isabela’s hips and the way she reaches up to straighten her bandana, it’s starting to always feel like she’s just waiting for her to come back.


End file.
